by John Walters
SCOTUS 9, NCAA 0
This had to be the most impactful no-touchdown contest since LSU 9, Alabama 6 back in 2011. The Supreme Court completely shut out the NCAA in its battle to maintain a waiver against anti-trust practices in order to keep an artificial ceiling on player compensation. Then Brett Kavanaugh—yes, that dude—wrote a concurring opinion in which he concluded, “The NCAA is not above the law.”
Only Trump-era Republicans are.
Anyway, college football has already created unrestricted free agency with the transfer portal. Here comes bidding ways. You’ll still watch on Saturdays. So will I. Might as well face it/We’re addicted to love.
Above there, that’s Whizzer White, who had one of the more impressive lives you’ll ever see: played three sports, including football, at the University of Colorado and later became a Supreme Court justice. We think he would’ve concurred with the majority opinion.
Hasn’t Football Always Been Kinda Gay?
Las Vegas Raider defensive end Carl Nassib posted on Instagram that he is gay. Very matter-of-factly. I’d say “nonchalantly” but that words sounds rather French, which sounds rather, well, you know. Anyway, Nassib becomes the first publicly acknowledged ACTIVE (not “actively,” ESPN) gay player in NFL history. The five-year vet played at Penn State, where he led the nation in sacks his final season.
Sincerely, though, this was a very brave thing for Nassib to do. He’s just signed a three-year deal, so he has security, but he’ll never be an anonymous NFL player again. For better and for worse, alas. But hopefully the next pro athlete(s) to announce such will be able to do so with less fanfare.
Bitcoin Bummer: It’s All Relative, Or Is It?
If you bought Bitcoin one year ago and never touched it, I have wonderful news for you: your investment is up more than 200%.
If you bought Bitcoin last February, we have some bad news for you: your investment has been halved.
Now China is cracking down on Bitcoin mining. The name-brand cryptocurrency fell below $30,000 for the first time since January this morning. It’s way too early (for us, at least) to know who’s right here, the old guard (it’s the greatest Ponzi scheme ever invented) or the young lions (dude, it’s the future). We’re just happy that we don’t own any crypto-related stocks right now.
And we feel that the arguments made by the likes of Michael Burry, Paul Krugman and even Bill Maher the past six weeks (which we’ve featured here) are more compelling than those by renegades who seem to be whistling past the graveyard this morning. They all sound like the dude above. Or like a MyPillow ad. At the end of the day it sounds as if the best thing about Bitcoin is believing in Bitcoin. It’s kinda like… a cult. But then, so was Christianity at one point. It all depends on how many people are going to go all in with the virgin birth thing and the resurrection thing. If enough people believe, you can have a Vatican City or a Bitcoin at $500,000, I guess.
Time will tell.
Driving Too Dumb Gets You A Cul-de-Sac-Sac-Sac-Sac/You Oughta Know By Now
This is the best argument for “Defund the Police” you’ll see today. Do you really need five squad cars to play follow-the-leader on a low-speed chase into a dead end?
Donovan Is Gonovan
If you watched NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Track & Field Team Trials from sunny and hot Eugene, you saw them do a nice feature on men’s 800 runner Donovan Brazier. They went fishing with him to a stream in Tillamook, Oregon, and played up the fact that the 2019 world champion and American record-holder from Grand Rapids, Mich., was the surest lock for Tokyo at least in last night’s hour of TV.
Guess what happened? Brazier did not win the 800. In fact, he came in last. You still gotta run the race.
Brazier’s loss may not help the U.S. send its best team to Tokyo, but it’s what makes the Trials such compelling TV. Four years of training can blow up in less than 2 minutes (or less for shorter races/events) with one poor performance. And for track athletes, shining at the Olympics is how you go from a mid-range level earner to a major earner. Brazier was poised for a big pay day. Now he’s just another millennial with nothing to do this summer.
The 70-60-54 Club
Perusing the first eight NBA players to commit to Team USA for men’s hoops and this jumps out at me: at least six of the eight have a 54-point game or better. Five of them have scored at least 60 points in a game and one (Devin Booker) has scored at least 70.
And none of them are named Stephen Curry or LeBron James, neither of whom will play.
The other two are Draymond Green (an excellent passer for a power forward) and Bam Adebayo, who probably had to sign a waiver promising not to shoot unless off an offensive rebound or alley oop. I doubt there’s ever been an Olympic squad with five players who have 60-points-or-better games on their resume. One or three, perhaps, but five?
Note: if the Suns go all the way to the NBA Finals and it goes seven games, Booker’s last NBA game would end one day before the Opening Ceremony. Would he still travel to Tokyo? Remains to be seen. They’d obviously be fine without him during round-robin play, so he could take a few days off and still head over there. What a summer that would be, eh?
The Judges Approve This Headline
I don’t know how many of us will wind up reading the story, but don’t blame the headline writer at The New York Times. His hed: “When An Eel Climbs A Ramp To Eat Squid From A Clamp, That’s A Moray.”
Well done. No splash. Frame this. And this is why SEO optimization needs to disappear from our lives. Give us creativity and fun over most-searched terms 9 days out of every 7, please.
The Kid
… is back on the Win track with Brazil’s defeat of Peru. So he’s now at 20-8 and $1,610. We’ll wait for today’s wager as he is returning from visiting his pops on Father’s Day (a day of regret and sorrow for his dad… I’ll wager).
Tonight The Kid returns to the ice, where he likes VEGAS -245 over Montreal. That’s losing $245, winning $100. You’re right, the Kid never takes the dog on the money line.